I’m not going to pretend I can analyze what that means for DFM, my many former colleagues there or for the news business. I hope for the sake of my many friends remaining in the company’s newsrooms across the country that the Apollo’s management will find a path to prosperity that doesn’t involve endlessly cutting staff. I hope the company will genuinely pursue the kind of digital creativity that the future demands and will have the staying power to let good ideas flourish.

Since seeing initial reports about the pending deal, I’ve wondered about the meaning of the $400 million sale price, reached in a long “auction” process that sought the best deal(s) to sell the company as a whole or in pieces.

The reported price tag is a breathtaking fall from what newspapers used to be worth, even in the past few years. I hope this means Apollo’s strategy isn’t to keep cutting staff to maintain profits. DFM doesn’t have much left to cut, and values have dropped as newspapers have been cutting. The best way to maximize this $400 million investment will be to build value by developing new revenue streams.

Comparisons of sales prices of media companies can be misleading. One sale might include more real estate, while another might include more debt or pension obligations. Successful subsidiaries can add value to a company. In a sale such as the DFM deal, which is essentially between two private equity companies, full terms may never be disclosed. You might not be comparing apples and oranges, but apples and lawn mowers.

I was not involved in the sale at all, other than losing my job last year as the company was preparing for the sale. But I understood DFM enough to know this was an extraordinarily complicated deal, with an array of factors that make it unique: (more…)

From the outset of Project Unbolt, a key goal was to produce a manual for other newsrooms to follow.

As I prepare to leave Digital First Media (tomorrow will be my last day), here is that manual, my recommendations for newsrooms to unbolt from the processes and culture of print. Our work on the project has not been as extensive as I had hoped, but I think we have produced a valid plan for accelerating the digital transformation of newsrooms. I hope my colleagues will continue the work and continue blogging about it.

Most of the manual is in earlier blog posts published here and elsewhere during the project. This post will summarize the important steps you need to take to transform your newsroom, with links to posts that elaborate on each of those points (some links appearing more than once because they relate to multiple points): (more…)

Newsrooms need to provide live coverage of most events and breaking news stories in their communities.

Live coverage will change your newsroom’s culture and workflow quicker and more profoundly than any other step you will try. It will make your news site more timely and produce more content and deeper engagement than any other step you will try. And it won’t take much more work from your staff; they mostly just have to start working differently.

If a journalist is covering an event for your newsroom, you should cover it live unless you have a strong reason not to (more on those later). Instead of taking notes at the event, the journalist should livetweet it, using the tweets mostly as notes if you need to write a story after the event. (You still might need to take notes of things you need to check out later.)

In all four of our Project Unbolt newsrooms, live coverage has been perhaps the most significant success, in our efforts to unbolt from print culture and processes. In a series of blog posts this week and next, I will address live coverage issues.

We’ll start with situations where newsrooms should consider live coverage: (more…)

This is the last in a series of seven blog posts about the Berkshire Eagle Unbolt Master Plan (which I explained in the first post). A staff committee developed the plan in response to my call for newsrooms to free themselves from print culture and workflow in six primary areas. This is the plan to unbolt the newsroom from the processes and workflow of print. Most of this post will be the Eagle’s plan lightly edited, with my comments in italics.

What are workflow and processes?

Currently our workflow happens in a variety of ways:

Digital journalists file stories. Filed copy is read and edited and sent to the web. Stories are then put in system for print.

Digital journalists (early and late shifts) write breaking stories that are sent to the web. Stories are then put in system for print.

In the sports department, the workflow process has been reprioritized to so that all stories have hit the web before the last page has been sent. Priority is given to game stories, which hit the website first, followed by daily roundups (as scores are called in later).

This is the sixth of seven blog posts about the Berkshire Eagle Unbolt Master Plan (which I explained in the first post). A staff committee developed the plan in response to my call for newsrooms to free themselves from print culture and workflow in six primary areas. This is the plan to for engagement. Community Engagement Editor Jenn Smith, chair of the engagement committee, rewrote part of the plan in response to my suggestions. Most of this post will be the Eagle’s revised plan lightly edited, with my comments in italics.

What is engagement?

Engagement must exist on two parallel levels in The Berkshire Eagle newsroom.

As a productive news outlet and agency of community engagement, we must adopt and exercise proven ways of gathering, communicating and sharing content and also strive to innovate new best practices within our industry. We will be advocates for our journalistic standards, practices and products by initiating two-way communication with our audience to generate ideas and feedback and to promote reader contributions as well. Where communications may struggle, we will work to meet our audience members at their level and help them to access the various tools and products we use to share news.

As a newsroom, it must become our practice, our habit, our instinct to constantly and consistently inform and share our work, ideas and give feedback on the content with produce. We shall focus on methods of collaboration versus insular or rogue pursuits, and provide quality technology and ongoing training to help improve these news practices. While we may have designated newsroom leaders, we also respect and encourage individuals and groups of staff members to express and share their specific skills sets, expertise and experiences.

How do we apply Unbolted engagement?

In the context of the newsroom, it’s the state of a news staff being geared up and ready for action — to tackle what the day and night bring, to communicate among themselves and with people in the community, and to share what we learn 24/7 in the most well-informed, efficient and meaningful ways possible. We want to add value to people’s lives by being their go-to source for information that is accurate, timely, helpful, depthful, relevant and presented in a well-rounded objective manner.

We also must actively reach out to the community to show that we’re ready to not only listen to their feedback, questions and ideas, but to respond. To do this successfully, we must remain alert and flexible. If someone cannot navigate our digital content, we must show them how by providing a personal response to their email or creating and sharing a tutorial. If we’re providing a liveblog, we must proactively promote the link to our readers and provide a place where people can easily recognize and access the link. If we’re excited about a contest we’re hosting, we need to share our enthusiasm through ongoing tweets and social media posts.

We need to continuously keep in contact with community entities — from animal shelters to youth centers, public health initiatives to human rights organizations — about how they’re addressing issues in the community and discuss with them how we might best keep people in touch with events, forums, initiatives, etc. Just as we encourage people to be active and informed citizens, we too must practice and maintain a leading role as a civically engaged community member.

Action plan for staff and community engagement

The following represents recommendations of initial priorities for Project Unbolt in The Berkshire Eagle newsroom:

Transparency

For newsroom:

Identify and articulate shared goals in how to improve communications amongst ourselves, particularly among reporters and editors. By doing so, we can better address issues such as story duplication and over-scheduling; planning coverage when reporters and editors are absent or on vacation; planning multimedia packages, informing op-ed pieces, etc.

Time frame: Have meeting or send out survey in next two weeks.

I asked Jenn for an update:

We have not done a formal survey. At 10:15, Monday through Friday, we have what we call “morning meeting.” Prior to each meeting, I also send out a weekday email to connect with people, share some kudos, discuss issues and give friendly reminders about deadlines or style changes/issues. This, along with our new Training Tuesdays initiative have become venues to address these issues.

For example, several reporters have done stories on Obamacare and Massachusetts Health Connector issues. When someone files a budget line via email or shares their story idea in person during our meeting, we tend to talk it out on the spot or come up with a communication plan. Someone might say, “That’s a great story idea, you should talk to…” or “Hey, I think Jim might be working on that. You should check in with him.”

By attending each meeting, managing editor Tom Tripicco or VP Kevin Moran will also chime in with their insight, since they have a bigger picture view of what everyone’s working on.

By being around to hear story budget lines, photo editor Ben Garver can then prioritize what to shoot and what multimedia packages to make.

Jen Huberdeau also tends to chime in about how people might be responding to a news story on Facebook, which guides us on how to address ongoing coverage of an issue. We also communicate a great deal through email, our internal chat system, phone calls and text messages about things like reporter absences, if someone has to run out or has a questions about story coverage, etc.

We include our Northern Berkshire bureau by having conference calls and group emails. People have been pretty responsive and communicative using the above methods.

Create and post in the newsroom, perhaps on the bulletin board, a definitive work flow schedule and daily deadlines, staff roles and responsibilities. Also determine daily checklist priorities. Buttry question: Is the bulletin board actually used? Should this be shared digitally either in addition to or instead of posting there?

Jenn’s answer:

Kevin Moran shares our weekly schedules through Google Docs, and also on a physical bulletin board. Any daily deadline changes are communicated through a news staff email, usually in the morning one I send out, or through something Tom or Kevin sends. Kevin is also composing and distributing and meeting with individuals or small groups about roles and responsibilities. Generally, everyone tries to file budget lines by 11 a.m. We also now talk about best practices and responsibilities during Training Tuesdays.

Establish and encourage an internal culture of sharing each other’s work, promoting content like “Behind the Beat” blogs, and helping each other find ways to get involved in community activities in the context of sharing their work (i.e.- community panels and forums, radio shows, volunteering, etc.), respectful to the level of agreement, comfort and interest of the staff member.

Time frame: Effective immediately.

Update from Jenn:

Yes, this is happening. News staffers tend to tweet and RT blog links, and we share them on our Facebook page. Sports staff Howard Herman and Matthew Sprague and I regularly participate in local radio shows. As community engagement editor, I attend a lot of community panels, presentations and lead newsroom tours. Jen H. recently served as a panelist on a school public speaking contest and participated in a community reading day event. I’m hoping to continue to network and get more staff involved in things like this.

Develop and implement an internal system where people can solicit feedback, share concerns about conflicts of interest in coverage, and where people can stay informed of Eagle, NENI and DFM developments, from Unbolt rollout to technology and software updates like the laptop and Saxotech rollouts.

For our community

Promote and share “Behind the Beat” and “Unbolt” blogs. Advertising side can also help do this. Create tandem Facebook pages for the “Behind the Beat” blogs for North County, Central County and South County to foster more reader interaction.

Conversation

Practice more crowdsourcing for public opinion for stories, i.e.- medical marijuana issue, hotel wars, upcoming elections and politics, school budgeting issues, etc. Facebook seems to be the leading place to do this.

Time frame: Effective immediately. Work with Jen H. to establish how staff members can create crowdsourcing posts on Eagle Facebook and Twitter accounts as needed.

Take inventory of social media sites currently used by individual news staff members. Ensure everyone is as least on Twitter and Tout.

Time frame: Effective immediately.

Ask each staff member to become an expert/regular user of at least one additional digital social medium, i.e.- blog, Pinterest, Storify, Facebook, Google+, Instagram… Any stars? Any less prominent social media represented: Quora? LinkedIn?

Time frame: Get individuals to identify and articulate commitment on at least one platform by end of week of March 9. Jenn Smith works with Jen H. and Kevin to create a quick sheet of options and descriptions of potential platforms.

Update berkshireeagleblogs.com listing. Make sure staff bios on berkshireeagle.com include photos and social media account info.

Time frame: Ongoing

Curation

Make and internally publish checklist of area websites, blogs, social media sites and other places that The Eagle can curate content from, including sister and competitor sites; local schools, businesses, law enforcement, etc.

Time frame: Start Google doc week of March 9, which staff can edit and contribute to.

Update from Jenn:

Still working on the doc but I’ve been communicating with Tom, Kevin and Jen H. about new news sites, content, etc. We have a few staff members who do this too. A couple of local radio stations credit The Eagle when they read the news. We do the same when we curate content from other reporting sources.

Interpersonal connections (aka Hangout)

Staff training on Google Hangouts and YouTube livecasting.

Time frame: March and April. Training includes setting up accounts.

Though The Eagle is a Digital First newsroom, its staff also recognizes that many audience members also prefer, and that there’s no replacement for face-to-face and one-on-one conversations and personal interactions. Brainstorm ways that each individual staff member can have regular connections with their primary audiences (take cues from politicians who do this and, as a result, become embedded in a community). Hypothetical examples: Regular South County coffee shop hours for John Sakata; a weekly Tout from Jeffrey Borak on upcoming theater performances; a monthly blog of editing and grammar tips from the Style Cop; a regular golf weather/course conditions commentary from Richard Lord.

Time frame: Spring 2014

Update from Jenn:

We’ll be doing more interactive things as the Berkshire tourism season kicks in. We also do community engagement through community generated photo galleries and have had some minimal success with contests.

Create and develop a protocol and procedures with local schools and emergency responders on who to contact at The Eagle to post emergency notices, from snow days to pipe bursts, violence or natural disasters.

Update from Jenn:

We don’t have anything in formal writing/handbook form, but we do have an ongoing morning protocol of communication via email about breaking news, and are working on a weekend structure. Jen H. and I work on things like closings and emergency notices. Clarence Fanto also does a great job contributing to this in terms of weather.

Jenn was joined on the committee by reporters Richard Lindsay, Philip Demers and John Sakata and visual journalist Gillian Jones.

This is the fifth of seven blog posts about the Berkshire Eagle Unbolt Master Plan (which I explained in the first post). A staff committee developed the plan in response to my call for newsrooms to free themselves from print culture and workflow in six primary areas. This is the plan to update and uphold the Eagle’s standards. Most of this post will be the Eagle’s plan lightly edited, with my comments in italics.

What are “standards”?

Standards establish the baseline of our credibility at The Eagle. Standards are our accuracy, ethics and integrity that build our brand as The Eagle and entrust us as the No. 1 news source with our readers. Our high standards differentiate The Eagle from the competition.

How do we apply Unbolted standards?

We adhere to the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics. We aim to avoid errors, and we correct errors as soon as we learn they have been committed and after verifying the accuracy. We may offer explanations as to how the errors were made and how the correct information now affects the context of a news story.

The notebook

Create one binder/notebook for all staff members that will include materials discussed in this committee and the other Unbolt committees. Also, we need to create a “digital” notebook as well. An internal WordPress blog? Buttry: I like the idea of a blog on ethics. You need to handle it carefully, discussing issues without embarrassing staff members who have made mistakes (unless they are egregious offenses such as plagiarism or fabrication). While I see the value of an internal blog, where you might be able to be more candid, without causing embarrassment, I also encourage occasional public posts about ethical matters. I think we build credibility by telling the public about our ethical decisions and standards and our commitment to ethics.

Digital consistency

Put a person in charge of coming up with web uploading standards and making sure they are communicated to all staff. Create a web upload checklist (put in notebook)

Let’s write these down, be specific, give examples of the proper way to slug, SEO headlines (put in notebook) and make sure ALL STAFF are trained.

Feedback when doing web uploading wrong. Have a weekly “state of the web” email sent out to let people know when updates to protocol have been made.

Eagle style

Someone needs to be in charge of updating our Eagle stylebook. This person needs to be given time to do this.

Updated style guide put into notebook and also online where staff can access it (blog, webpage?).

Corrections policy

Who does the reader contact with a correction? (Make sure that person’s contact info is easy to find on the web and in print) Suggestions for policy:

o All corrections from every department should run in the same spot in the paper.

o All corrections should be slugged the same. Example: (Section)CORRECTION(date) and filed into B2/B3, along with an email sent to Tom and the night desk editors that a correction has been filed.

Online corrections: Ask online editor Jen Huberdeau to correct the error online ASAP and include an editor’s note in italics at the top of the story explaining the correction and date and time the correction was made. The editor’s note should be included online only when the correction is a factual error (i.e. spelling of name, incorrect information, wrong date, place, time) not for punctuation errors. Those should just be fixed.

All online corrections should also go in one place online. One suggestion is a live blog of editor’s notes (similar to what AP Breaking news does) that Jen would update after the correction is made in the story. Buttry: The New Haven Register, another of our Project Unbolt pilot newsrooms, has a corrections blog.

Accuracy checklist

Goal: Create one to print out and put in notebooks

Remember: Who, what, when and where

Spell names correctly; check with that person in person and verify place names. Do a quick Google search on the name, or even check Facebook, especially when the name is a questionable spelling.) Before hitting send, check the names one more time!

Check phone numbers (Google search)

Check web addresses

Double check locations (Everyone should have a map of their coverage area. Also, someone with local knowledge should put together a “common mistakes” list when it comes to local streets/places to help new reporters.) Is your sense of direction correct?

When writing about an event: Time, date, place

Any red flags? Don’t just take the police report/coach’s word for absolute, final truth. Does something seem fishy? Ask. Does a name or city street name look different? Ask.

Get another read before sending to the web, or putting it on the page. No editors around? Ask a fellow reporter.

Know your own weaknesses. Do you have trouble with numbers? Triple check your work. Are you terrible with commas? Ask an editor or reporter to double check your punctuation.

SPELL CHECK!

Buttry: I’m an advocate of accuracy checklists. As Craig Silverman notes, they have proven to prevent errors by other professionals, such as pilots and surgeons, and journalists should use checklists, too. Craig and I have developed checklists, but I encourage newsrooms or journalists to develop their own checklists, improving on ours.

Social media/blog standards

Live by the rule: “The standard is the standard.”

Before posting on Twitter, Facebook, blogs run through the accuracy list above.

Appoint a point person to do a nightly check of what our reporters/editors are tweeting/posting. Is it meeting our standards? Is someone doing a great job — and have they been told that lately?

Code of Ethics

Make sure everyone has a copy and at least one is posted in the newsroom and posted online — our readers should know the code of ethics we follow.

Possible additions: A reminder that these ethics apply to all platforms of journalism: Print, web, mobile, tablets and social media.

Respect for others in the newsroom/your co-workers. Is your space clean? Avoid using language that offends others trying to work. Buttry: These are good points, but I don’t see cleanliness or foul language as matters of ethics. Might want to change the heading or give that point its own heading.

Communication

Email should be a back up. Phone or face-to-face is best. Buttry: Excellent point for most important communication. Email is valuable, though, for repeating or reminding of the points made face to face, and can be efficient if people are working different hours or someone is in the field.

Similar to the meeting we had to roll out Unbolt, let’s have a quarterly meeting to go over large initiatives.

Departments should have a “huddle” once a week to go over changes, check in to see how everyone is doing, discussions about what worked and what didn’t. The “huddle” should be quick, efficient.

Editors should come up with a way to encourage staff who have gone above and beyond. Maybe a monthly wrap-up of what went well? (Similar to the “Strokes and Pokes” newsletter Charles used to create.)

This is the fourth of seven blog posts about the Berkshire Eagle Unbolt Master Plan (which I explained in the first post). A staff committee developed the plan in response to my call for newsrooms to free themselves from print culture and workflow in six primary areas.

This is the plan to drive the Eagle’s mobile journalism. Most of this post will be the Eagle’s plan, with my comments in italics. Digital First Media is changing mobile publishing vendors. I am leaving in references to the new vendor, Rumble, but have deleted a reference to the name of the vendor we’re replacing.